How well is the last-ditch effort to repeal ObamaCare going? It’s proceeding so well that the president and one of his allies have taken to feuding publicly over who’s to blame for its failure. Early this morning, in between tweets about Luther Strange and the Russian meddling “hoax,” Donald Trump fired a shot at fellow Republican Rand Paul for his adamant stand against Graham-Cassidy:

Rand Paul, or whoever votes against Hcare Bill, will forever (future political campaigns) be known as "the Republican who saved ObamaCare."

This feud may expand in an uncomfortable way for Paul, however. Pro-life activists who need the Graham-Cassidy vehicle to get defunding of Planned Parenthood passed on a simple majority have begun a full-court press on Paul. They argue that a no vote isn’t just a vote to save ObamaCare, as Trump accused, but also a vote to save the leading abortion mill chain:

Pro-life activists descended on Sen. Rand Paul’s office in Kentucky on Thursday with a simple message: If he votes against a last-ditch bill to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood, then he will betray the core of conservatives’ beliefs.

Mr. Paul is one of a handful of holdouts on the latest repeal bill. He said it leaves too much of Obamacare intact.

But the bill’s supporters say it’s the best — and probably only — chance they have to dent the 2010 Affordable Care Act and if Mr. Paul is the one who stymies them, then he will be complicit in funding the “abortion Goliath” of Planned Parenthood.

“The disastrous status quo that is Obamacare is harming families, using our taxpayer dollars to fund abortion and line the pockets of Planned Parenthood’s billion-dollar abortion industry,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America.

This is one reason the Graham-Cassidy bill is likely to fail. Two of the three Republican holdouts, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, said that the Planned Parenthood defunding language on previous versions played a large part in their decision to oppose them. If Paul signed onto the bill, it wouldn’t matter; Mitch McConnell could then get to 50 without Murkowski and Collins. Without Paul, though, McConnell would have to trade off the defunding effort to get them, and then the bill would lose conservatives like James Lankford (R-OK), and run into serious trouble in the House:

Right now, though, there is considerable pressure on all 52 Republicans to fulfill their campaign promise of the last seven-plus years. The issue isn’t whether it’s the best plan, but that it’s the last chance they’ve got:

“It has all of the worst elements of the House bill that was passed in May and the Senate bill that was defeated in August,” said John Baackes, CEO of L.A. Care Health Plan.

But none of that may matter to Republican senators facing extreme pressure to finally pass something — anything — that scraps the health law and fulfills seven years of campaign promises.

Next week’s expiration of the rule allowing Republicans to pass a bill without any Democratic support has “concentrated Republican minds,” said Dean Clancy, a conservative health policy analyst who supports the plan. “This is their last chance to show they can govern on health care, and if they can’t govern on health care, what can they govern on?”

“They all hate health care,” said a GOP lobbyist on background. “They don’t know where to go on it. They just want to take a vote and be done with it.”

This is still a long shot, and so is the Planned Parenthood defunding effort. At this point, even Rand Paul should ask whether it’s better to get half a loaf — or event 10% of a loaf — rather than none.

After remarking on the need for a consistent pro-life approach on immigration in the US, Pope Francis might have to clean house on that topic with religious brothers closer to home. The Belgian Brothers of Charity issued a defiant statement today after a Vatican order to stop offering euthanasia, especially in non-terminal cases, for their psychiatric patients. Rather than comply, the monks insist that they have plenty of room within Catholic teaching to assist in suicides when patients request it:

The board of the Belgian Brothers of Charity announced Tuesday it will continue offering euthanasia to patients in their psychiatric centres, despite being ordered by the Vatican to stop doing so.

The “Broeders van Liefde” board had been given until the end of August to comply with the Vatican order, which was seen and approved by Pope Francis. Brothers of the order were also asked to sign a joint letter to their general superior, Brother René Stockman, confirming their adherence to Church teaching.

In a Sept. 12 statement the organization defied the Vatican request and said it “continues to stand by its vision statement on euthanasia for mental suffering in a non-terminal situation.”

The group claims that talks with the Vatican have gotten nowhere, which might be because there’s not a lot of middle ground to plumb in this case. In their view, the Vatican has stuck to the “deontoligical view and ideologization,” which is a fancy way of saying “pointing out the cathechism and Catholic teaching on life.” They argue that this question requires a broader view of ethics than that found in Catholic teaching:

In recent weeks, paths have been explored to get both parties to the table. However, this has not yet produced any results. In the meantime, we will continue to request establishing a dialogue so that we would have a chance to explain our vision statement and our argumentation.

One of the debates that has arisen over the past few months in response to our vision statement is whether this vision is still consistent with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. We emphatically believe so. The text has come about starting from the Christian frame of thought as we apply it within the organization. In this, we always take into account the shifts and evolutions within society. We have considered the following elements: recognition of the exceptional, proportional view of ethics, deontological view and ideologization, and choice of conscience. (see attached text)

We wish to emphasize that with the new vision statement we continue to put the inviolability of life first and not just regard it as equal to the value of autonomy. The vision originated with the aim of providing the best possible care.

In our facilities, we deal with patients’ requests for euthanasia for mental suffering in a non-terminal situation with the utmost caution. We take unbearable and hopeless suffering and patients’ requests for euthanasia seriously. On the other hand, we want to protect life and ensure that euthanasia is performed only if there is no more possibility of providing a reasonable treatment perspective to the patient.

This issue hinges especially on the fact that the patients involved are non-terminal in physical health. Even if they were terminally ill, however, active intervention of euthanasia would be prohibited, as per CCC 2277, which clearly states that any kind of euthanasia for “handicapped, sick, or dying persons … is morally unacceptable.” That applies to an act of omission as well as an act of commission if either directly result in death. In a particularly apt warning in this case, the catechism instructs that good faith does not make this a question of prudential judgment:

The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

In other words, this teaching doesn’t hinge on the circumstances involved. “Recognition of the exceptional” and a “proportional view of ethics” are as irrelevant as they would be in cases of abortion (CCC 2272). The text of the catechism could not be plainer, nor the direction of the magisterium (teaching authority) of the Vatican. However, the group’s view of papal authority in this matter can best be described by their reaction to the order from the Vatican last month even after their order’s leader told them to shape up:

Brother René Stockman, the order’s Rome-based global head, told the Flemish church news service Kerknet that a planned consultation had already failed and he would be ready for dialogue only “if it’s about barring euthanasia, and not about finding a modus vivendi”. …

Stockman said last month he was confident the brothers on the board would follow “the Magisterium of the Church” but was not sure about the lay members.

One of them, former European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, reacted to the Vatican ultimatum last month with a tweet saying: “The time of ‘Roma locuta, causa finita’ is long past”.

For those who aren’t familiar with the phrase (properly Roma locuta, causa finita est), it means “Rome has spoken, the matter is settled,” a slogan taken from Augustine sixteen centuries ago. If that’s what they think, they’d better be prepared for disappointment. Pope Francis may be a reformer, but he’s hardly a congregationalist. When it comes to keeping the seamless garment of pro-life teachings together, Francis won’t allow a Belgian group to yank on the string and unravel it to suit their own purposes, especially to allow for the killing of non-terminal patients.

What happens now? Catholic News Service asked that question a month ago to a canon lawyer in Belgium:

It is expected that the Vatican will respond to the order’s latest statement. As to the potential punitive measures Pope Francis might ponder, Professor Kurt Martens, a Belgian Catholic who teaches canon law at the Catholic University of America, told CNA Deutsch in an email interview Aug 14: “the Brothers who are members of the board face dismissal from their institute – thus will no longer be brothers and members of the institute – and the health care institutions would forfeit their right to call themselves Catholic”.

That would be a decision they made themselves, of course. If they want to go their own way and ignore the teaching and the authority of the Catholic Church, they’re welcome to do so … but not while remaining Catholic.

Has Twitter taken sides in the Charlie Gard controversy, or has its automated filters become inadvertently triggered over its popularity? The Mirror reports that Gard’s parents have had to launch a new Twitter account due to interference with its messaging from the platform, which they call “censoring.” The change comes at a critical time, as the UK’s National Health Service continues to dither on when — and whether — they will pull the plug on the baby:

https://twitter.com/Fight4Charlie/status/882333970280656900

Charlie Gard’s family claims ‘Twitter is censoring’ their page set up to campaign for the terminally ill 10-month-old. …

The Twitter account fell short of stating exactly what material they believe had been blocked from social media.

The claims sparked an angry backlash from social media users who accused Twitter of being “disgraceful” and “anti-life”.

It’s not the first time that charge has been leveled at Twitter. The pro-life group Live Action accused the social-media platform of blocking its ads a little over a week ago. Twitter informed them that they could no longer advertise with pictures of ultrasounds or criticisms of Planned Parenthood, which they argued violated the platform’s terms of service:

The Washington Times obtained emails showing examples of tweets that were deemed unacceptable by Twitter ad bots and members of the Twitter sales team.

Twitter’s e-mailed responses to Live Action’s protest made it clear that the platform intended on basing access on content rather than behavior, Lila Rose said:

In order to restore Live Action’s eligibility to advertise, a member of Twitter’s sales team said, the pro-life group must “remove current and past sensitive content from your website and Twitter feed” or “create a new Twitter handle for marketing/advertising efforts that drives to a new website that does not include content that violates our policy.”

“Live Action can run ads — but first you have to delete all tweets that, effectively, criticize Planned Parenthood, show images of preborn children or ultrasound images, that talk about the abortion procedure or link to investigative footage,” she said. “And you have to create a new Live Action website that doesn’t include any of that content, either, in order to reactive your ability to run ads on your account.”

With that as context, it’s not difficult to imagine that Twitter is imposing content-based restrictions on the Gard family, too. They deny it, however, and as the Mirror notes, there hasn’t been an indication of what the account was prevented from doing. It seems highly unlikely, however, that a family in these dire straits would choose this particular moment to pick a fight with a social-media platform it desperately needs to save the child’s life without having a very good reason to do do.

Speaking of Orwellian, how about this final sentence at the end of the Mirror article?

Great Ormond Street Hospital have allowed Connie Yates and Chris Gard a few more days to say goodbye to their son.

The NHS has “allowed” the parents to have their son live. How generous of them. That may be an indication, however, that the avalanche of bad publicity has the British government looking for a way out. Theresa May told the House of Commons that she’s open to a reasonable offer to exercise some “discretion” on whether to allow the parents to get their child out of the hospital. May expressed confidence that Great Ormond Street Hospital would be open to reasonable suggestions:

The family’s local MP, Labour’s Seema Malhotra, used PMQs to say that while the chances of the US treatment helping Charlie were low, doctors could say within three months whether he was responding.

Talking about the possibility of Charlie being sent to the US, Malhotra asked May: “Would the prime minister do all she can to bring the appropriate people together to try and make this happen?”

Saying her thoughts were with the infant and his family, May said she could “fully understand and appreciate that any parent in these circumstances would want to do everything possible and explore every option for their seriously ill child”.

The prime minister added: “But I also know that no doctor ever wants to be placed in the terrible position where they have to take such heartbreaking decisions.

“The honourable lady referred to the fact that we have that court process here. I’m confident that Great Ormond Street hospital have and will always consider any offers on new information that has come forward, with consideration of the wellbeing of a desperately ill child.”

Ahem. Had the hospital and the NHS been open to reasonable solutions, they would have allowed the parents to take Charlie to the US for experimental treatment using the private funds they raised for that purpose. Furthermore, the Vatican’s children hospital has offered to take over the case and let Charlie’s parents direct the medical approach, but thus far the UK has yet to take them up on that offer, either. If the hospital really was ready to “consider any offers,” they wouldn’t have forced the case into court in the first place.

So far, the hospital has not taken Charlie off of life support. According to the (new) Twitter feed for the family, they will stage a rally in London tomorrow to put more pressure on May and the NHS. Perhaps it might create some second thoughts for Twitter, too.

]]>Christian conundrum: Should a pregnant teen be publicly humiliated by her school?https://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/26/christian-conundrum-pregnant-teen-publicly-humiliated-school/
Fri, 26 May 2017 14:01:21 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3957370"Because she was immoral."

When Maddi Runkles enrolled at Heritage Academy in Hagerstown, Maryland, she and her parents signed an agreement to follow a moral code. When the straight-A student became pregnant earlier this year, the school saw it as rather incontrovertible evidence that Runkles had violated the rules and suspended her — at first for the rest of her senior year, but then on appeal for a short time. However, they also required her to conduct a public confession to the entire school and the parents of the students, and now have refused to allow Runkles to participate in her graduation ceremony.

Is this accountability, or is it something a lot less … Christian? The Washington Post reports that Heritage Academy is sticking by its decision despite an outcry from pro-life groups:

A small Christian school in western Maryland is not backing down from its decision to ban a pregnant senior from walking at graduation next week.

Despite a public outcry and growing pressure from national antiabortion groups to reconsider, Heritage Academy in Hagerstown says that senior Maddi Runkles broke the school’s rules by engaging in intimate sexual activity. In a letter to parents Tuesday evening, school principal David R. Hobbs said that Runkles is being disciplined, “not because she is pregnant but because she was immoral. … The best way to love her right now is to hold her accountable for her morality that began this situation.”

Runkles, 18, is a 4.0 student who has attended the school since 2009. She found out she was pregnant in January and informed the school, where her father was then a board member, in February. Initially the school told Runkles that she would be suspended and removed from her role as student council president and would have to finish the rest of the school year at home.

After the family appealed, Heritage said it would allow Runkles to finish the school year with her 14 classmates but she would not be able to walk with the other seniors to receive her diploma at graduation. The family believes that the decision is unfair and that she is being punished more harshly than others who have broken the rules.

Runkles appeared on Fox News to tell her story:

Hobbs told the Post that the violation of the abstinence clause was “a grievous choice,” and that Heritage “believe[s] in forgiveness, but forgiveness does not mean there’s no accountability.” Well, sure, and that is in line with Christian teaching as well, but Heritage has applied multiple forms of punishment already. Runkles lost her student leadership position and got suspended, two understandable and reasonable punishments for violating the student code of conduct. Few would complain about those forms of accountability.

The other forms applied, however, go beyond accountability and into public humiliation. Forcing Runkles to stand in front of the whole school to discuss her sins is just one embroidery short of The Scarlet Letter, and quite arguably abusive. Keeping Runkles from the final and most important ceremonial event of her time at Heritage Academy seems nothing short of vindictive after having piled on punishment after punishment already. This escalating series of actions speaks much more about the leadership of Heritage Academy than it did about the quality of Runkles’ leadership.

Perhaps this hits too close to home for me to be entirely dispassionate about Runkles and her situation, having lived through this situation once. The world is not kind to pregnant teens as it is; they face all sorts of pressure from the secular world to abort their children, and shame when they don’t knuckle under to it. It’s possible for people to support and love those who get pregnant without lauding it as an ideal or ignoring the mistake that led to it. One would expect more from a Christian community than a shunning over an unfortunate mistake. One should expect more from a Christian community than that.

However, my primary and continued complaint is that the disciplinary actions of the administration has extended far beyond accountability for the broken pledge regarding premarital sex. That accountability was served justly and humbly in Maddi’s confession, her suspension, and her removal from leadership positions. What was initially a punitive and learning moment has transformed into a public lesson (before this even was announced to the media). By banning Maddi from walking at graduation, the administration and board collectively decided on a disciplinary measure of an obviously public nature.

By banning her and her alone, the administration and board collectively decided to make a public example of one student and has either intentionally or unintentionally communicated to the school community that pregnancy (not simply premarital sex) is a shame and should not be observed within our school community.

I suspect the real answer is more simple. Runkles’ pregnancy embarrasses the school (irrationally), and they don’t want her around.

Let’s hope more rational minds prevail at Heritage, and that Runkles gets a chance to graduate with her classmates as she has earned over the last four years. If not, perhaps the rational minds of the current and prospective Heritage parents should consider a less hostile environment for their children.

Aaaaaannnnnnnd … that’s all it will amount to being, too. The Atlantic reports on efforts by DNC chair Tom Perez to repair a self-imposed rift within the Democratic Party that just cost them a municipal election in Omaha, and might cost a lot more than that next year. After telling pro-life Democrats that they have no place in leadership or in office, Perez will now meet with some pro-life groups in an attempt to seem more inclusive — but not without making sure to check in with the pro-abortion groups that control his party first:

Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez plans to meet with pro-life group Democrats for Life of America, amid an ongoing controversy within the party over whether and to what extent Democrats should pursue voters who oppose abortion. Democrats for Life advocates for pro-life Democrats and describes itself as “the pro-life voice of the Democratic Party.”

The meeting, which the DNC is setting up at the group’s request, is one of several conversations that Perez is having with pro-choice and pro-life Democrats, an aide to Perez confirmed to The Atlantic. As part of that outreach, Perez has spoken with Democratic elected officials and party leaders, and held a meeting earlier this month with women’s groups. The effort comes at a time when prominent Democrats are attempting to walk a fine line between affirming their party’s pro-choice platform and suggesting that there is room in the party for pro-life voters and candidates.

The party’s 2016 platform supports access to “safe and legal abortion,” and vows that Democrats will “oppose, and seek to overturn, federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion.” The DNC recently named Jess O’Connell as it’s new CEO, the former executive director of EMILY’s List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office.

Just how much of an opening is this? Read the entire Atlantic piece by Clare Foran to get the gist, but the answer is: narrow. Perez plans to meet with Democrats for Life of America and its executive director Kristen Day, but … the date has not yet been set. The meeting will take place at DNC headquarters in DC too, which makes this less an outreach than a grant of a schedule slot. That’s the only meeting set up for the purpose of engaging a “big tent,” which seems to indicate that Perez doesn’t plan to get out much in other areas to engage pro-life Democrats and independents. In fact, it doesn’t look like he’s getting out at all.

Foran’s piece highlights another problem, too. Other than Day and DFLA, it doesn’t look like The Atlantic knows of any other pro-life groups, either, to see how many of their members might be (or used to be) Democrats. On the other hand, Foran name-checks several pro-abortion groups, whether or not they offered any input for the piece: EMILY’s List, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and a pro-abortion lobbyist in Virginia. Needless to say, among those who do have comments about Perez’ efforts, they run to one theme: Don’t dare back down from the litmus test.

Demanding adherence to a right to abortion “got us to where we are today,” she said, with 38 of the 50 states having Republican electoral majorities — 27 of them under full GOP control — compared to just five states where Democrats have full control. The numbers kind of speak for themselves,” she said. “And when we push pro-life Democrats out of the party, this is what happens.”

At the federal level, “this abortion litmus test has hurt us dramatically. If you look at 30 years ago in the United States House, we had 135 pro-life Democrats and a 292-seat majority. Today, we have 30. We can’t get the majority we want without electing pro-life Democrats. The number of pro-choice Democrats has stayed at about 185, 180. If we want to follow NARAL and Planned Parenthood’s strategy, we’re going to stay there” in the minority, Day said.

Basically, this is just Perez’ attempt to jolly along pro-life liberals for one more electoral cycle. Will they fall for it? Who knows, but no one can pretend any longer that the scales have not fallen from their eyes.

A group of group of pro-life students at Fresno State in California learned some rough lessons in free speech and the legal system recently, leading to a court case which will no doubt receive national attention. It seems that the group, Fresno State Students for Life, made plans to write some pro-life messages in chalk on the sidewalks outside the school library and obtained the required permits for a public display from the school. When the time came, they crafted their messages, including one which read, “You CAN be pregnant & successful” on the pavement, but quickly received an unexpected surprise. One of the professors from the school showed up and informed them that their free speech was in “the wrong place” and he would be coming back to clean up the unwelcome display. (CNN)

Shortly before finishing, the lawsuit claims, William Thatcher, an assistant professor of public health, approached the group and said they had to keep their messages to the university’s free speech area.

According to Bernadette Tasy, one of the organizers with the group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Thatcher then said he would be back to remove the messages. Tasy says he returned with a group of students and they attempted to remove the group’s messages.

Video provided to CNN by the group’s lawyers shows Thatcher starting to erase the messages with his foot.

Here’s one video of the professor coming back with a group of presumably pro-abortion students who he enlisted to wipe out the chalk display because it wasn’t in “the free speech zone.”

As indicated in the CNN piece, this has resulted in the pro-life group launching a lawsuit against the professor. Before proceeding, I just wanted to offer a quick note on CNN’s coverage of this story in the linked article. Take particular note of the fact that the headline of the piece reads, “Anti-abortion student group sues California professor over free speech.” You will observe that the hyphenated phrase anti-abortion appears several times in plain text. Then check out this short paragraph.

Tasy claims the students also took some of their chalk and wrote “pro-abortion messages” on the same sidewalk. The messages included “My body, my choice” and “Your body, your choice. I (heart) you.”

Isn’t it curious that anti-abortion can be liberally sprinkled throughout the article in normal text, but pro-abortion is put in scare quotes? And not once in the entire article will you find the phrase pro-life. They just can’t bring themselves to utter the words. But as I said, that’s just an aside. Moving on.

These free speech cases can often be tough ones to pursue, particularly when you’re fighting the entire university. But in this case I’m guessing that the pro-life students may have a significantly easier path because the university administration is throwing the professor under the bus already. (Emphasis added)

In a statement to CNN, Joseph Castro, president of California State University, Fresno, said the school’s policy on free speech is clear.

“Free speech on campus is not limited to a ‘free speech zone’ or any other narrowly defined area,” he said. “Those disagreeing with the students’ message have a right to their own speech, but they do not have the right to erase or stifle someone else’s speech under the guise of their own right to free speech.”

Going back to the video, this portion of the debate hinges on what was truly one of the ugliest things said by the professor. (Among many.) He told the pro-life students that they needed to take their display over to “the free speech zone” despite the fact that they had a demonstration permit for the precise area where they displayed the chalk messages. Apparently he’s not aware that we already have a free speech zone: it’s called the United States. And the remarks from the University president are now on record completely refuting what the professor was saying.

This is one free speech case which may sail through trial and see the professor actually paying a price for his actions. Whether or not they can also pursue the students from his class who he enlisted to literally erase free speech remains to be seen. It looked as if they were already onboard with the message, but if it was classroom time and he actually “enlisted” them it may remove some of their culpability.

]]>Democrat Heath Mello loses Omaha mayoral race after abortion controversyhttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/10/democrat-heath-mello-loses-omaha-mayoral-race-after-abortion-controversy/
Wed, 10 May 2017 17:21:55 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3955199"That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state."

Heath Mello is the moderate 37-year-old Democrat who was going to help his party make inroads in GOP-controlled Nebraska by becoming the next Mayor of Omaha. Yesterday he lost that race to Republican Jean Stohert who will return to office for another four-year term.

What’s most interesting about this race wasn’t Mello himself but the sharp division he exposed within the Democratic party over the issue of abortion. Mello, who has been a state representative since 2009 is Catholic and had supported some pro-life measures in the past. For many on the left that was a deal-breaker, even though Mello promised to maintain support for abortion rights as mayor.

Bernie Sanders, who is no one’s idea of a moderate, campaigned for Mello last month citing the need for Democrats to be pragmatic about races in Republican territory. “If you have a rally in which you have the labor movement and environmentalists and Native Americans and the African American community and the Latino community coming together saying, ‘We want this guy to become our next mayor,’ should I reject going there to Omaha?” Sanders asked rhetorically. He added, “I don’t think so. It was a great rally, and I hope very much he wins.”

But Sander’s pragmatism was firmly rejected by the president of NARAL. Ilyse Hogue released a statement saying, “Abortion access is not a ‘single issue’ or a ‘social issue. It is a proxy for women to have control over our lives, our family’s lives, our economic well-being, our dignity, and human rights.” In other words, no hint of compromise is acceptable on this issue. That position was given some added weight by the fact that progressive women had taken the lead in ‘The Resistance’ to the Trump administration.

DNC chairman Tom Perez initially offered support for Mello but after getting an earful from abortion supporters reversed himself. “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices,” Perez said. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state,” he added. Perez even suggested the party would challenge any Democrat who voted against the party line on the issue.

Heath Mello lost the race 53-46, which isn’t extremely close. Still, in a race in which only 96,000 votes were cast the difference was only 6,500 votes. Maybe Mello could have closed that gap with some additional support from the party. Instead, he was publicly castigated for his past position on abortion.

But the issue applies more broadly than one mayoral race in Omaha, Nebraska. As I pointed out last week, there is some evidence, based on data from the 2016 election, that Hillary’s loss was the result of Obama voters who abandoned her to vote for Trump. If accurate, that means Hillary didn’t lose because she failed to turn out her base, but because she failed to persuade swing voters.

It’s easy to see how a debate over abortion becomes a choice between those who are willing to embrace pragmatic persuasion and those who demand party purity. In the case of Heath Mello, the party chose the latter and lost. Democrats may need to embrace persuasion again if they want to come back from their current low point, but at the moment pragmatism still isn’t very popular.

]]>NY Times publishes an op-ed critical of abortionhttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/09/ny-times-publishes-op-ed-critical-abortion/
Tue, 09 May 2017 21:21:29 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3955085"There are better solutions; they just require more creativity and more effort."

The NY Times published an op-ed Tuesday by Lori Szala, the national director of client services at Human Coalition. The Human Coalition is a pro-life group which hopes “abortion will become unthinkable and unavailable in our lifetime.” Obviously, that’s not the sort of thing you see published in the NY Times very often:

“Abortion rights are a key pillar of income equality,” writes Ellen Shaffer at the Center for Policy Analysis. “Opposition to abortion rights is a key factor keeping women and kids in poverty.” Another commentator asserts that lack of abortion access is “one of the biggest contributors to the gender wage gap.”

Activists see a lot of appeal in this argument, a way to bridge the gap between liberal women and economic populists. But it comes with enormous baggage.

Above all, it’s a profoundly dehumanizing argument. It reduces mothers and their children to mere economic objects, and amounts to saying we are justified in killing those who impede our economic progress. Parenting presents undeniable challenges, but no one argues that those challenges give parents the right to kill their children.

This last statement is undeniably true. No one (well, almost no one) argues women should have the right to kill newborns based on economic circumstances. Infanticide is simply not an acceptable or appropriate solution to income inequality.

Despite this rejection of the argument which views abortion in economic terms, the author of the piece quotes Frederica Mathewes-Green saying “an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.” In other words, women who feel trapped (economically) are likely to see abortion as a way out. But the author argues there’s a better solution:

There are better solutions; they just require more creativity and more effort. Organizations like mine can help women find jobs, enter substance abuse treatment programs, regain their children from foster care, find housing, pay utility bills and sign up for government benefits.

I see a bit of self-contradiction here. On the one hand, the author is saying that there’s something dehumanizing about viewing abortion in economic terms. On the other hand, she’s suggesting jobs, housing, help with bills, and government benefits are a way to resolve the problem of an unplanned pregnancy. Those are obviously all economic solutions. In other words, the author seems to be reinforcing the idea that economics and abortion really are linked, though she doesn’t see her own use of that argument as dehumanizing.

Here’s what I think the author meant: Yes, there is a link between economics and abortion but we’re addressing the problem in the least humane way. Rather than seeing abortion as a quick solution for a woman who feels trapped, we should instead be looking for practical ways to un-trap her. To their credit, that does seem to be part of what the Human Coalition is trying to do.

]]>Pelosi: Maybe a purity test on abortion for Democrats isn’t such a good idea after allhttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/03/pelosi-maybe-purity-test-abortion-democrats-isnt-good-idea/
Wed, 03 May 2017 16:31:00 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3954273Beginning to see the light

It’s time to break out the popcorn again because the Democrats still seem to be engaged in a civil war following their 2016 losses. So great is the internal divide at this point that they can’t even come to grips with a political topic as old and entrenched as abortion. It used to be a fairly easy call for them: the party loved abortion and kept is as a standard plan in their platform, but if any Democrats were running in red states or districts they were free to swerve off the trail and do what needed to be done to win. Not so much anymore. The young bucks pushing the party to the hard left want an all or nothing approach.

The Democratic Party should not impose support for abortion rights as a litmus test on its candidates, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday, because it needs a broad and inclusive agenda to win back the socially conservative voters who helped elect President Trump.

“This is the Democratic Party. This is not a rubber-stamp party,” Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters.

“I grew up Nancy D’Alesandro, in Baltimore, Maryland; in Little Italy; in a very devout Catholic family; fiercely patriotic; proud of our town and heritage, and staunchly Democratic,” she added, referring to the fact that she is the daughter and sister of former mayors of that city. “Most of those people — my family, extended family — are not pro-choice. You think I’m kicking them out of the Democratic Party?”

This is bad news for conservatives and Republicans because if the Democrats suddenly go back to listening to leaders who exhibit a bit of common sense and electoral pragmatism they just might start picking up a head of steam. But Pelosi will have quite the sales job in front of her if she wants to sell this idea. She’s going to be running athwart of Dick Durbin for starters. She’s also directly contradicting the new Chairman of her party who attempted what Pelosi is trying out in Omaha but quickly scurried back to toeing the line himself after he was smacked down.

And many of you probably remember the strange case of Thomas Groome not too long ago. He’s the professor at Boston College who wrote a piece in the New York Times suggesting that just maybe the Democrats couldn’t afford to be “the abortion party” anymore. That didn’t end well.

Imani Gandy of Rewire News tweeted that Groome should “f*** off.” CNN’s Keith Boykin said, “This is baloney. I’m pro-choice, and I’m not going to change my views to win an election. Nor should the Democrats.” The Huffington Post’s Emma Gray “To win, Democrats should ignore the needs and lives of women who vote for them.”

In a bizarre role reversal with the GOP from 2010, the Democrats are rapidly becoming the party of the purity test. It’s not just abortion. You have to agree with every line item on the liberal social justice warrior agenda and do so chapter and verse or risk being driven out of the party on a rail. Abortion is going to be a particularly tough battleground for them if they insist on abortion on demand loyalty from all their candidates. While a majority of Americans don’t want to see pregnant women or their doctors locked up in jail for planning an abortion, a solid majority of them are also in favor of at least some restrictions on the procedure, particularly once the baby reaches the point of viability. (Which happens earlier and earlier as medical technology advances.)

As I said, Nancy Pelosi has her work cut out for her. Let’s give her plenty of room to run and see where this goes.

Expect the communications strategy at Health and Human Services to take a sharp turn toward life. Donald Trump appointed Dr. Charmaine Yoest, a longtime pro-life advocate, to a key position at HHS:

President Donald Trump Friday said he would name one of the most prominent anti-abortion activists in the country to a top communications post at Health and Human Services.

Charmaine Yoest, tapped to be to be assistant secretary of public affairs, is a senior fellow at American Values. She is the former president of Americans United for Life, one of the most prominent anti-abortion groups in the country, which has been instrumental in advancing anti-abortion legislation at the state level to restrict access to the procedure.

Full disclosure: I count Charmaine and Jack Yoest among my friends. We first met more than a decade ago at various events, but I got to know both of them better during the three Justice Sunday efforts to push for confirmation of George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees. These came before Charmaine’s tenure as president of Americans United for Life in 2008, where she has tirelessly advocated for pro-life policies. She and Jack are among the happiest of warriors, and the warmest of friends.

The appointment signals a desire for an even closer relationship with the pro-life movement, especially at HHS. It comes at a good time, too, as conservatives had begun to wonder about that commitment after the Department of Justice acted to continue defending HHS’s contraception mandate, or at least had not yet taken the opportunity to withdraw from them. Yoest’s addition to the team resets the signals, at least for now, and ensures an aggressive media campaign in support of the contraception mandate’s eventual unwinding.

Axios’ Jonathan Swan also reported on the White House’s efforts to boost morale among supporters on religious liberty and pro-life policies. Leonard Leo says actions will come soon when the efforts become bullet-proof against litigation, including an executive order protecting religious expression:

Several movement leaders have told me privately that they worry Trump has judged this too politically risky to bother with. But Leo tells me the delay has nothing to do with that. He says senior officials at the Justice Department and the White House are working through complicated negotiations over how to structure health insurance transactions.

“The administration is not stepping back. It’s doing precisely what it should be doing here… because of the way people are attacking Trump executive orders, it’s very important that this thing gets done right and be as litigation-proof as possible, knowing full well they’re going to get sued anyway.”

The addition of Charmaine Yoest to the administration will no doubt alleviate some of those concerns — for now. At some point, movement leaders need to see action, especially on the contraception mandate. When it comes, though, Charmaine will definitely lead the charge to define it properly. Congratulations to my friend, and best wishes for success.

]]>Durbin: Dems can think what they want, but are required to support abortion in policyhttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/24/durbin-dems-can-think-want-required-support-abortion-policy/
Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:31:15 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3953082"Why don't you interview Tom Perez, and not me!"

BASH: I want to ask you before we go, as a Democratic leader, about some party politics. A debate broke out in your party this week when Bernie Sanders endorsed a candidate with a pro-life voting record for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. Ilyse Hogue, who is the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the endorsement a betrayal of women.

Where do you come down on this debate? Are you with NARAL or Senator Sanders?

DURBIN: Listen, I am committed to women’s rights under the law, reproductive rights certainly, and our party is. We have made that part of our platform and position for a long, long time. I know, within the ranks of the Democratic Party, there are those who see that differently on a personal basis. But when it comes to the policy position, I think we need to be clear and unequivocal. We need to be understanding of those who take a different position because of personal conscience.

But, as long as they are prepared to back the law, Roe vs. Wade, prepared to back women’s rights as we have defined them under the law, then I think they can be part of the party.

In other words, Democrats respect conscience rights, as long as it doesn’t mean that people contradict their position. Hmmm. That’s not exactly how conscience rights work, of course, but it’s also no surprise that Democrats don’t respect them at all. This is the same party that tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception coverage as part of its health insurance, and which has in a number of ways pressured Catholic hospitals and clinics to perform abortions, too.

On Sunday’s edition of ‘Meet The Press,’ NBC’s Chuck Todd asks Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi if there is a place in the Democratic Party for people who are pro-life. …

“Why don’t you interview Tom Perez, and not me!” she joked.

“Of course” you can be a pro-life Democrat, Pelosi said. “I’ve served in the House with many members who did not share my very positive, aggressive position on promoting a woman’s right to choose.”

Er … suuuuuure. Notice how quickly Pelosi changes the subject on Todd, saying that “values” unite the House Democratic caucus. Maybe, but it’s a lot easier to do with fewer people, and it has become very clear over the last several years that pro-life voters have no place within the Democratic Party. Just ask Bart Stupak.

Less than two years ago, America Magazine editor-in-chief Fr. Matt Malone asked Joe Biden the same question, and got a more specific answer. As it turns out, it was also a wrong answer:

Mr. Biden spoke at length about how he understands the tension between the demands of his faith and his position on abortion. When Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., America’s editor in chief, asked Mr. Biden if it was difficult taking positions on issues that put him at odds with U.S. Bishops, as in the case of abortion, he responded:

“It has been hard…I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God­-fearing [and] non­-God­-fearing people that have a different view,” Biden said. He continued, “Abortion is always wrong…But I’m not prepared to impose doctrine that I’m prepared to accept on the rest of [the country].” (See the exchange, which begins at the 13:30 mark, in the full interview embedded at the bottom of this post.)

Fr. Malone also asked Mr. Biden if there was room for people who are pro-life in the Democratic party. The Vice President responded resolutely: “Absolutely. Absolutely, positively. And that’s been my position for as long as I’ve been engaged.”

That may (or may not) have been Biden’s position, but it’s clearly no longer the position of the Democratic Party. And now there is no avoiding that reality for pro-life voters.

]]>DNC Chair declares there is no place for pro-life Democrats in today’s partyhttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/23/dnc-chair-declares-no-place-pro-life-democrats-todays-party/
Sun, 23 Apr 2017 13:31:24 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3952990Let us know how that works out for you

We went through a lengthy period where the former chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, provided nearly endless amusement with her frequently unhinged antics. It made for some great television and she provided a convenient foil for Republicans who wanted to demonstrate the unserious nature of some Democratic positions. After the brief, but embarrassing tenure of disgraced interim chair Donna Brazile, I’m sure that the Democrats were hoping for some significantly more “stable” leadership under Tom Perez. That really doesn’t seem to be working out, though. In the latest of his many odd statements, the new boss let all of his soldiers in the field know that if you don’t support abortion on demand then you shouldn’t expect any backing from the national party. (Huffington Post)

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez became the first head of the party to demand ideological purity on abortion rights, promising Friday to support only Democratic candidates who back a woman’s right to choose.

“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said in a statement. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”

“At a time when women’s rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country,” he added, “we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.”

There’s no mystery as to what’s going on here. Perez landed in hot water with the liberal base during the party’s “unity tour” when he lent his support to a pro-life Democrat running for mayor in Omaha. This new position he’s taking is absolutely a 180 degree about-face from what he was saying only a few days earlier. Strangely enough, when he initially endorsed Heath Mello (the aforementioned candidate) he was making a lot of sense. He came out and said that the job of the DNC was to “help Democrats who have garnered support from voters in their community cross the finish line and win.”

Guess what, Tom. You had it right the first time. Whether it’s a Senator, a congressman, a mayor or a member of the local village council, the job of elected officials is to serve the interests of the people in that locality who elected them. Nobody at the state and local level is beholden to either the national Democratic or Republican parties, nor are they sworn to uphold the party platform line for line. This is a lesson that the GOP had to learn the hard way after the purge in the 2008 to 2010 era. The GOP needs their RINOs, particularly the ones in the northeast, if they want to hold on to a majority in the House. The same applies to state legislatures, county commissions and school boards. It’s worth remembering that the New York GOP congressional delegation fell to a grand total of three seats during that period after previously holding more than a dozen. (We’ve been slowly recovering, but it was a rough patch for the party.)

If the Democrats want to weed out every single candidate across the nation who opposes abortion they will be driven further into the wilderness than they are now. Pro-abortion speeches sell really well in the coastal cities where Democrats hold large majorities and raise most of their money, but there’s an awfully large swath of the country in between where that’s not going to win you an election. I get that Perez needs to appease his base during the tumultuous transition they’re currently going through, but if he’s actually interested in doing the job he fought so hard for he needs to start delivering some wins. And you don’t do that by letting the most extreme wing of your party write all of the rules.

]]>A theology professor wrote about how Democrats need to stop being the abortion party. It didn’t end well.https://hotair.com/archives/2017/03/31/a-theology-professor-wrote-about-how-democrats-need-to-stop-being-the-abortion-party-it-didnt-end-well/
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 22:41:26 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3950184When in doubt ... read the instructions.

Well, this is a rather explicit display of liberal intolerance and one that points to their issue with people of a religious bend. Thomas Groome, a professor at Boston College who teaches theology, penned an op-ed in The New York Times about how the Democrats need to stop being the abortion party if they want to win again, noting how the Democrats’ hard left shift on abortion is chipping away at the Catholic voting bloc that has been part of the party’s base for decades. The reaction was as expected from rabid pro-abortion liberals.

Imani Gandy of Rewire News tweeted that Groome should “f*** off.” CNN’s Keith Boykin said, “This is baloney. I’m pro-choice, and I’m not going to change my views to win an election. Nor should the Democrats.” The Huffington Post’s Emma Gray “To win, Democrats should ignore the needs and lives of women who vote for them.”

These folks never read the piece. It’s evident since Groome never said they needed to stop being pro-choice, just not be so gung-ho to the point where it seems like all you care about is abortion. It was a very nuanced approach that the Left took, as they have to all become pro-life to win. That is precisely wrong.

Polls indicate that the nation holds mixed views about abortion. About 80 percent of Americans don’t want to criminalize it again. At the same time, at least 60 percent of Americans — and most likely a higher percentage of Catholics — oppose abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Yet despite the clear complexity of those attitudes, political discourse largely ignores the possibility of a middle ground between making all abortions legal or prohibiting them entirely. Mrs. Clinton, like most Democratic politicians, fell into this either/or trap last year.

[…]

To begin with, Democratic politicians should publicly acknowledge that abortion is an issue of profound moral and religious concern. As a candidate, Barack Obama did just that in a 2008 interview, saying, “Those who diminish the moral elements of the decision aren’t expressing the full reality of it.”

Democrats should not threaten to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funds to be used for abortion except in extreme circumstances. They could also champion an aggressive program to promote adoption by strengthening the Adoption Assistance Act of 1980 and streamlining adoption procedures. The regulations in many states seem designed to discourage it.

Democratic politicians should also continue to frame their efforts to improve health and social services as a way to decrease abortions. The abortion rate dropped 21 percent from 2009 to 2014. That downward trend would most likely end if Republicans eliminate contraception services provided through the Affordable Care Act.

“If Democrats want to regain the Catholic vote, they must treat abortion as a moral issue, work for its continued reduction and articulate a more nuanced message than, ‘We support Roe v. Wade,’” he concluded. He mentioned the differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on how they both framed the issue in the debates. For Clinton, it was through a legal, not moral lens. Groome added that Trump decided to describe a late-term abortion when he said, “ripping the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day,” but he noted that 90 percent of abortions are within the first trimester. Late term abortion is incredibly unpopular, though the first trimester abortions are not seen on controversial. The point here is that abortion is a moral argument. There is no way around it.

Liberals, you can be pro-choice and still feel that it’s a rather abhorrent procedure and it should be reduced. And Groome mentions how the Obamacare regulations on contraception could reverse the downward trend in the number of abortions that happen every year. He just defended an Obamacare regulation that is loathed by conservatives. Did you guys even bother to read this piece?

This circles back to an Atlanticarticle from December of 2016, where reporter Emma Green interviewed Michael Wear, who headed the Obama White House’s faith-based outreach operations. Wear is a conservative evangelical Christian, who said that the Democratic Party has a God problem, which stems from open animosity towards people of faith and religious illiteracy. Here’s the portion of the interview that dealt with abortion, where Wear reiterated what Groome mentioned in his NYT op-ed about viewing the issue of abortion through a moral lens that liberals have seemed to shun:

Green: One could argue that among most Democratic leaders, there’s a lack of willingness to engage with the question of abortion on moral terms. Even Tim Kaine, for example—a guy who, by all accounts, deeply cares about his Catholic faith, and has talked about his personal discomfort with abortion—fell into line.

How would you characterize Democrats’ willingness to engage with the moral question of abortion, and why is it that way?

Wear: There were a lot of things that were surprising about Hillary’s answer [to a question about abortion] in the third debate. She didn’t advance moral reservations she had in the past about abortion. She also made the exact kind of positive moral argument for abortion that women’s groups—who have been calling on people to tell their abortion stories—had been demanding.

The Democratic Party used to welcome people who didn’t support abortion into the party. We are now so far from that, it’s insane. This debate, for both sides, is not just about the abortion rate; it’s not just about the legality of it. It’s a symbolic debate. It’s symbolic on the pro-choice side about the autonomy of women and their freedom to do what they want with their bodies. On the pro-life side, they care not just about the regulations around abortion, but whether there’s a cultural affirmation of life.

Even the symbolic olive branches have become less acceptable.

And there rests how Groome got an undeserved tongue-lashing by the left, who obviously didn’t read the article, for suggesting that the Democrats need to acknowledged the moral context of this debate.

“Reaching out to evangelicals doesn’t mean you have to become pro-life. It just means you have to not be so in love with how pro-choice you are, and so opposed to how pro-life we are,” Wear told Green.

And it’s not like this was the first time someone has mentioned this issue with the Democratic Party in regards to their position on abortion. There are pro-life Democrats out there. In 2012, ABC News’ Cokie Roberts observed how the Democratic National Convention was “over the top” when it came to abortion aptly noting that 30 percent of Democrats are pro-life.

The issue of abortion is deeply entrenched in morality and religion. The Democrats’ unwillingness to even consider moral arguments, coupled with living in urban progressive bubbles, has driven them further left and rabid in its defense. In neither piece do we have people saying that Democrats are dead if they don’t become pro-life, but maybe they can have a more constructive dialogue about it, while maybe peel off Republican votes in the process—maybe. While pro-lifers—and I consider myself one (I’m adopted)—view abortion as murder and immoral, we have to understand that tens of millions of Americans have a different view. I abhor abortion, but reduction in its frequency is a measured win—and more importantly, those who are pro-choice can agree with that too. Sadly, even considering the moral angle to this complex issue can summon the progressive Twitter mob to call for your hanging.

Last Note: I almost forgot–Democrats booed God at the 2012 DNC as well.

This investigation was launched by pro-abortion left-wing hack Kamala Harris, then attorney general of California and longtime recipient of Planned Parenthood lucre, who parlayed her persecution of David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress — replete with a police raid of Daleiden’s home in search of undercover footage — into a U.S. Senate seat last November. Not satisfied with merely persecuting Daleiden under existing law, Harris even took the extra step of collaborating with Planned Parenthood to draft new legislation that would make secretly recording medical-care providers a distinct crime. The Daleiden investigation that she began has now been picked up by the new attorney general, Xavier Becerra (himself a Democratic former member of Congress), who decided yesterday to drop a cool 15 felony counts on Daleiden and his partner, Sandra Merritt, for exposing Planned Parenthood’s possible sales of fetal body parts because they recorded the conversations without the subjects’ consent. Unlike most of the 50 states, California requires both parties to a conversation to agree in order for it to be recorded lawfully.

Fifteen felony counts. How many felonies were the Manson family charged with?

The charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress come eight months after similar charges were dropped in Texas.

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat who took over the investigation in January, said in a statement that the state “will not tolerate the criminal recording of conversations.”

Prosecutors say Daleiden, of Davis, California, and Merritt, of San Jose, filmed 14 people without permission between October 2013 and July 2015 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and El Dorado counties. One felony count was filed for each person. The 15th was for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy.

Jacob Sullum has a nice run-through of California law on wiretapping. It’s true, you can’t record a confidential communication without the other party’s consent — but is a conversation “confidential” if it’s happening at a restaurant, or some public event? California Penal Code 632(c) specifically “excludes a communication made in a public gathering … or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.” Many of the Daleiden recordings were made in exactly those circumstances; the most famous, a chat with PP bigwig Deborah Nucatola, was recorded in a restaurant. In fact, none other than Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, acknowledged in congressional testimony about the Daleiden tapes that she had admonished Nucatola for discussing PP’s medical practices “in a nonconfidential area.” (Daleiden posted the video of Richards’s testimony this morning.) But wait, says Sullum, it may not be that simple. Some experts on California wiretapping law argue that you can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your communications even in a public place. It depends on the circumstances. For instance, if you’re at a “private” event with lots of media, like, say, a celebrity Oscars party, it may be that the definition of “confidential” there differs from what it would be in a quiet restaurant.

Ben Shapiro, however, argues that the law is actually quite clear in this regard. Just because you’re talking to strangers privately doesn’t mean that the communication is “confidential.”

[T]he Ninth Circuit found in 2002 that tapes made in private areas between a company and undercover journalists who are “strangers” to that company are not illegal – they ruled that a very similar undercover investigation by ABC News against Medical Laboratory Management Consultants for Primetime Live was just fine: “Devaraj’s willingness to invite these strangers into the administrative offices for a meeting and then on a tour of the premises indicates that Devaraj did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of solitude or seclusion in the parts of Medical Lab that he showed the ABC representatives.”

Furthermore, the court found no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the conversations between the ABC undercover reporters and medical technicians: “Devaraj did not reveal any information about his personal life or affairs, but only generally discussed Medical Lab’s business operations, the pap smear testing industry, and Gordon’s supposed plans to open her own laboratory.” In fact, the Ninth Circuit explicitly distinguished Arizona law from California law and then said that even under California law, there would be no reasonable expectation of privacy: “The expectation of limited privacy in a communication – namely the expectation that a communication shared with, or possibly overheard by, a limited group of persons will nonetheless remain relatively private and secluded from the public at large – is reasonable only to the extent that the communication conveys information private and personal to the declarant.” This is precisely the same logic that would apply here.

That’s a narrow definition of privacy, seemingly excluding any conversations that have to do with non-personal matters, like, oh, say, how a business carries out certain medical practices. If Shapiro’s right, Daleiden might well beat the rap. On the other hand, this is a Ninth Circuit precedent, famously one of the country’s most liberal courts. What reason is there to think they wouldn’t find a wrinkle to make the felony charges against Daleiden stick just as Harris and Becerra did?

The media, which normally thrills to undercover investigations (democracy dies in darkness, after all!), is curiously silent this morning about the state bringing down the hammer on two citizen-journalists. How come?

And that video is much further out on a limb than this since it was likely recorded by a third party not involved in the conversation.

The Romney video was recorded at a fundraiser held at the Boca Raton home of a private citizen, in an address to guests who had paid to be there, by someone who wasn’t even a party to a “conversation.” If that incident had happened in California, would Romney have had a claim against the mole who recorded it on grounds that it was a private setting in an address designed to be off the record? Of course not, or at least not in the court of media public opinion. The privacy interest involved would have been deemed insignificant vis-a-vis the news value in what Romney said. In fact, California law specifically includes an exception to its wiretapping laws for especially newsy recordings — specifically, recordings aimed at “obtaining evidence reasonably believed to relate to the commission by another party to the communication of the crime of extortion, kidnapping, bribery, any felony involving violence against the person.” Planned Parenthood’s fetal-tissue business may not qualify, but the principle behind that exception is sound: When a recording is of great public interest, capturing evidence that may involve significant wrongdoing, the person who recorded it is off the hook. Becerra could have exercised his prosecutorial discretion and refused to charge Daleiden and Merritt for that reason, arguing that although they don’t technically qualify for the statutory exception, their interest in exposing possible malfeasance in organ trafficking was virtuous. But that’s the whole problem. In California, making Planned Parenthood look bad isn’t virtuous, ever. Result: 15 felony counts.

Here’s the latest from Daleiden, released just this morning in a show of defiance. Sample quote: “Dr. Taylor explains to the investigators, ‘In Arizona, if the fetus comes out with any signs of life, we’re supposed to transport it. To the hospital.’ When one investigator then asks, ‘Is there any standard procedure for verifying signs of of life?’ Dr. Taylor replies, ‘Well, the thing is, I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?'” No public interest in having that exposed, right?

Tomi Lahren has reportedly been suspended from her show at the Blaze after a controversy erupted over her decision to announce she was pro-choice on the View last week. From the Daily Caller:

Lahren’s show is suspended for effect for at least one week starting Monday, according to TheDC’s sources. A source with direct knowledge of the situation previously told TheDC that Lahren’s contract with the company goes until September, but that she may leave the company before then.

This announcement follows a rather ominous tweet by Glenn Beck yesterday responding to Lahren’s defense:

There seem to be several different reactions to this announcement. On the one hand, some people seem to see the idea of a pro-choice woman acting as a conservative spokesperson on television, since that view is out of step with the right. Then there are those who were offended by how Lahren presented her views. Here’s what she actually said:

I’m pro choice, and here’s why. I am a constitutional, y’know, someone that loves the Constitution. I’m someone that’s for limited government. So I can’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say I’m for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies. I can sit here and say that as a Republican and I can say, you know what, I’m for limited government, so stay out of my guns and you can stay out of my body as well.

Maybe Lahren didn’t intend this, but what she said is that she holds these views because to do otherwise would be hypocrisy, i.e. anyone who supports the 2nd Amendment but is pro-life is a hypocrite. So she has now insulted a significant portion of the conservative audience including, apparently, her boss.

And speaking of hypocrisy, when did Lahren’s views on the life issue change? It must have been very recently because, as the Federalist points out, just a few months ago she was talking like a pro-lifer:

Three months is a very short time to traverse the massive philosophical and political divide between “baby killers” and “stay out of my body.” It would be one thing is Lahren had been pro-choice on her own show and then announced a hardcore pro-life position on The View. That would suggest someone who had made a big shift but was sticking to their own internal convictions despite the resistance from the immediate audience. But that’s not what happened here. Instead, it looks as if Lahren has been telling each audience what they wanted to hear. And if that’s true on one of the fundamental issues dividing the major parties and the country, it could be true on other issues as well.

]]>Live stream and blog: The March for Life takes over Washington, DChttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/27/live-stream-the-march-for-life-takes-over-washington-dc/
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:55:18 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3941404"We're in the promise-keeping business."

12:56 – Sen. Joni Ernst announces that she’s reintroducing a bill to redirect Planned Parenthood funding to other healthcare providers who do not provide abortions. She’s also introducing a bill to remove Barack Obama’s regulation that shored up Planned Parenthood funding through Title X.

12:53 – This is the speech of the day, from Mia Love. “May we never allow our funds to pay for the death of young children!”

12:51 – The big reveal: the story she started telling at the beginning was about her own parents and their difficult choice in giving her life. Amazing speech.

12:50 – Love relates the story of a young black woman holding a sign at last week’s march: “I survived Roe v Wade.” Terrific speech.

12:46 – Rep. Mia Love speaks to the crowd, offering a soaring speech about the hope of new life.

12:44 – Planned Parenthood still the biggest target of outrage for speakers.

12:33 – Jeannie Mancini returns to the stage for her own address, rather than as the emcee.

12:25 – Excellent, moving speech from Pence. It’s a very good start to his term as vice-president.

12:22 – Pence urges love over confrontation. “When it comes to matters of the heart, there is nothing stronger than gentleness.”

12:20 – Pence says life is winning through science, which shows human life objectively in all its stages, and also through “faith-based organizations” that provide support for women and the choice of life. “Compassion is overcoming convenience, and hope is overcoming despair.”

12:19 – “We’re in the promise-keeping business,” Pence says, and cites the Mexico City policy reinstatement. Pledges to work with Congress for permanent bans on federal dollars flowing to abortion providers.

12:18 – Pence tells the crowd that Trump asked him to make a personal appearance this year.

12:16 – “Life is winning again in America!”

12:14 – Mrs. Pence introduces her husband and gets a great cheer. Pence says he’s relaying Donald Trump’s good wishes as he welcomes the marchers to Washington. “Best day I’ve ever seen for the March for Life.”

12:13 – People certainly love Mike and Karen Pence at this rally. Bigger cheer than for Conway.

12:11 – “We look forward to working with you,” Conway says in conclusion. The pro-life movement certainly hopes so, and has to be delighted with the start of the new administration.

12:09 – She’s delivering an excellent speech on the need to support life as an innate human good, and not a commodity.

12:06 – Conway makes her appearance on stage, introduces herself as “a wife, a mother, a Catholic, counselor to the United States of America — and yes, I’m pro-life.”

12:04 – “Kellyanne is one of us,” says the president of the March for Life. She’s first up, but there’s a delay backstage for some reason.

Update, 12 noon ET: An on-time start!

Ready for another fight over crowd size? The 44th March for Life takes to the National Mall in Washington, with the live program scheduled to start at noon, and the march at 1 pm ET. Vice President Mike Pence and top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway will speak to the gathered demonstrators for the pro-life cause, but be prepared for more disputes over just how many demonstrators have gathered. NBC News sets the stage for the later debate:

For the first time in years, abortion opponents will have all the political momentum when they hold their annual rally Friday on the National Mall.

The March for Life, held each year in Washington to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, said it will have one of its biggest-name speakers in years: Vice President Mike Pence.

The March for Life said that neither a president nor a vice president has ever addressed the event now in its 44th year. And one of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, is also on the speakers’ list.

Organizers told the National Park Service in their permit application they expect 50,000 participants. Yet Trump insisted on the eve of the rally that the crowd would be far larger, saying “a lot of people are gonna be showing up.”

Contrary to the New York Times, there were vastly more than “hundreds” at the Washington March for Life 2016 and more than the vague “thousands” indicated by the Washington Post. Given this year’s historic winter weather threat, organizers were delighted that at least 40 or more thousands of pro-life supporters still stayed to march the full length of the march route before rushing home.

Mainstream media, however, took advantage of the adverse circumstances to manufacture the lowest numbers yet of their usual far-too-low estimates of participants in the annual march this year.

These photos and the video posted by LifeSite clearly reveal the total lack of credibility of the New York Times’ and Washington Post’s efforts to present an honest estimate of the numbers at the march. As reported Thursday, “The Alliance for Fair Coverage of Life Issues launched its #CoverTheMarch campaign that day demanding the media cover this year’s March for Life and cover it fairly.” Well, once again, it hasn’t.

Expect more of these fights after the march concludes, especially given the back-and-forth this week over the inauguration crowd estimates. The media will be keen to compare turnout this year not to previous March for Life events, but to the turnout for the Women’s March on Washington last weekend. Perhaps they’ll also compare the count of broken windows, burned-out cars, arrests, and litter. I suspect that won’t be the case, however.

The biggest story of this march is that the demonstrators have more political momentum behind them now than in eight years — and maybe longer than that. With a Supreme Court opening and a vice president on the dais, it’s a moment that many of these activists have prayed they would see. Let’s hope those prayers get fulfilled.

We have a live stream courtesy of NBC News. Follow along with all of the speeches, and with the other events as they take place.

Here are the speakers for today’s event:

March for Life confirmed speakers are: Kellyanne Conway, Senior Counselor to President Trump; Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York; Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA); Rep. Mia Love (R-UT); Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ); Benjamin Watson, tight end for the Baltimore Ravens; Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood Director and founder of “And Then There Were None”; Karyme Lozano, Mexican telenovela star; Eric Metaxas, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author and host of The Eric Metaxas Show; Bishop Vincent Mathews Jr., President at Church of God In Christ World Missions; and Vice President of the United States Mike Pence.

I’ll do some light live blogging of the events for the first hour. As usual, updates will go to the top in reverse chronological order.

Great news, if not surprising news. As contraceptive technology has improved, as the taboo against using it has shrunk, and as new restrictions on abortion have passed in various red states, it’d be odd if the rate weren’t declining.

The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, which conducted the survey, says there were fewer than a million abortions performed last year for the first time since 1975. Which is also good news, once you get past the whole “a million children aborted every year for 40 years” thing.

I’m going to go ahead and guess that this has something to do with the decline:

By one estimate, fully 35 percent of pregnant teenagers end up aborting. As such, a steep drop in teen pregnancy logically means a steep drop in the overall number of abortions. To see how steep, eyeball this Guttmacher graph from April of last year comparing the decline among teenagers in terms of pregnancy, live birth, and abortion. By 1990, the pregnancy rate was creeping up on 12 percent; today it’s less than half that. The abortion rate among teens was nearly 40 per 1,000 women in 1988; as of 2011 it had dropped to just 13.5, which is lower than the current national level per the graph above.

One more data set for you, this from an HHS report in 2015 on increasing use of “long-acting reversible contraception,” a.k.a. IUDs:

They weren’t used much during most of the 80s due to safety fears but now they’re back and then some, especially among career-age women. Guttmacher claims that IUD use rose 36 percent between 2009 and 2012 alone. Substitute “long-acting” birth control for more traditional “situational” measures like condoms, which may or may not be used in the moment, and, yeah, it stands to reason that that’ll mean fewer pregnancies.

By the way, according to two polls taken last year, approval of birth control as either morally justified or not a moral issue is virtually unanimous among Americans. Gallup found 89 percent willing to call contraception “morally acceptable.” When Pew asked a similar question, just four percent overall (and eight percent of Catholics) deemed it morally wrong.

I’ve written about national efforts which the GOP is expected to take against Planned Parenthood and even some which could eventually threaten Roe v. Wade itself, but pro-life efforts won’t end at the national level. As Fox News reported last week, the GOP also had a historic election night at the state level:

Republicans increased their control in state legislatures leaving Democrats with their lowest level since the Civil War.

Beating pollsters’ odds, the GOP picked up five state House chambers and two state Senate on November 8.

“Republicans certainly bested expectations on the national level and that holds true for the states where they are likely to come out ahead by 30 to 40 seats,” Dan Diorio, a policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures, told FoxNews.com.

Republicans increased their majority of governorships to 33 from 31 — their highest level since 1992.

And that, in addition to Trump’s victory, has pro-abortion Democrats nervous and pro-life groups getting ready for a busy year. From the Hill:

“It’s definitely going to be a busy session,” said Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee. “Right now is the time that our affiliates are shaping their legislative agendas and what they’d like to see passed.”

Fourteen states have already banned abortions that occur after 20 weeks. Six more have banned abortions by dismemberment.

In addition to bans on late-term abortions several states will also be using regulatory action to tighten the rules for abortion clinics even as legislation makes its way through GOP held state houses:

“A lot of the trends in the states will be to simultaneously introduce things in legislatures and implement rules in departments that have anything to do with abortions,” said Aimee Arrambide, the reproductive rights program manager at the left-leaning Public Leadership Institute.

Arrambide said she expected Republican-led states to implement onerous rules governing reporting and medical waste disposal through agencies as companion bills make their way through legislatures. Texas is one state where Republicans have used the dual track method: The state required fetal burials or cremations even before the legislature passed its own law.

Arrambide is encouraging states controlled by Democrats to pass laws codifying Roe v. Wade at the state level. That’s an admission that the controversial ruling is now in peril. But most Democrats are said to be more focused on battling Trump’s pro-life replacement for Justice Scalia and any appointments which come after that.

Note: Front page image is an infographic created by the Guttmacher Institute showing abortion restrictions added between 2011 and 2015.

Forty-three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion to be a constitutional right. Three years later, Illinois Republican Rep. Henry Hyde pushed Congress into banning almost all federal funds from being used for abortions.

That ban, an annual budget rider known as the Hyde Amendment, has saved more than two million children from death in the womb, according to a new report from Charlotte Lozier Institute Associate Scholar Dr. Michael New.

The Democratic Party’s platform promises to repeal of the Amendment because it “impede[s] a woman’s access to abortion,” as does party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Vice-Presidential nominee Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has said he will subordinate his support for Hyde to Clinton’s agenda against it if their ticket wins in November.

The insanity here is pretty deep:

Likewise, the head of a Texas-based abortion group said in the press release that “Hyde hurts our clients and their families because it forces them to pay out of pocket for a procedure that should be recognized by our government as not only a basic human right, but a basic form of medical care that Texans of all socioeconomic backgrounds depend on.”

New told me he’s confident that Republicans will hold onto Hyde – it’s a law with broad public support – though if Democrats take the Senate and hold the White House all bets may be off as the butcher party will probably shut down the government just to overturn Hyde.

In statements issued yesterday, two leading House GOPers said they’ll hold tight to Hyde.

From Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI):

“No American taxpayer should be forced to pay for abortions. The Hyde Amendment has been the cornerstone of protecting conscience for 40 years and is responsible for saving more than 2 million American lives. Make no mistake: The Hyde Amendment will remain central in our fight for life until the day Roe v. Wade is overturned entirely.”

And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA),who vowed to “continue to support the Hyde Amendment”:

“Thanks to the passage of the Hyde Amendment, millions of children have been saved from the horrors of abortion. In fact, recent estimates find that over 2 million people have been saved by theHyde Amendment. Thanks to the efforts of Chairman Hyde, the gift of life has been given to so many who did not have a voice.

“When the Hyde Amendment was originally passed, both the House and Senate were composed overwhelmingly of Democratic Members. Forty years later, the Hyde Amendment has been renewed each appropriations cycle with few changes, supported by Congresses controlled by both parties, and Presidents from both parties.

As I noted in my Stream piece, the Hyde Amendment is imperfect – it allows federal funding in limited circumstances, and it has no effect on the abortion-inducing drugs and devices Planned Parenthood gets from the federal Title X program. Other sources of funding are either untouched or so convoluted even the Government Accountability Office couldn’t figure out whether the money was coming from the feds or states.

But more than two million people were born thanks to Henry Hyde. That’s got to mean something.

Last week, California legislators did the bidding of their Planned Parenthood allies, sending a bill that would jail pro-life journalists to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown. From my article at The Stream:

AB 1671has been opposed by media and civil rights groups, as well as prominent pro-life organizations, since it was introduced earlier this year. Violators could see three years in jail or thousands of dollars in fines for releasing undercover investigations to the public or the media.

While the bill formally protects all health care groups from undercover investigators, it was written by Planned Parenthood’s California chapter, which argues that the bill is necessary to protect abortion groups from pro-life agitation.

Groups like the ACLU and the California Newspapers Publishers Association (CNPA), however, said the bill was unacceptable in part because it punished media outlets that used information gathered by undercover investigators. On Tuesday, this part was removed by sponsor Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, which led the CNPA to announce it changed its position to neutral.

“While we find it troubling that this bill potentially criminalizes speech, we realize this bill had political momentum and our immediate concern is to protect newspapers and journalists,” CNPA Legal Counsel Nikki Moore told The Los Angeles Times.

The ACLU did not immediately respond to The Stream’srequest for comment as to whether its position had changed. The LA Times’editorial page, however, condemned the current bill.

“But make no mistake, this measure would heap more criminal and civil penalties on making a secret recording — an act that’s already prohibited by state law, even when done in the public interest — simply to satisfy an interest group popular among Sacramento Democrats,” wrote the editors.

California is a two-party recording state, and as the Times’ editors’ noted, “state law already makes it a criminal violation of privacy, punishable by up to 3 years in prison, to use an electronic device to listen in on or record people without their permission.”

The editorial also highlighted the far-reaching consequences of this bill, such as giving carte blanche permission to jail whistleblower employees.
So what’s Planned Parenthood’s game here? Alienating allies isn’t normally on its list of goals – the ACLU, after all, is trying to forceCatholic hospitals to provide abortions, and yet it came out against AB 1671.

Live Action’s Lila Rose probably has it right. In a statement, she noted that California is likely the experiment state, and if the law survives, other states are next. But the Times’ whistleblower point is also important – it’s not just journalists like David Daleiden and Rose who are at danger here. Will the abortion industry’s many whistleblowers be scared into silence out of fear of jail, if such anti-constitutional laws march their way nationwide?

For any objective observer, AB 1671 is a cinch to oppose — as Seton Motley told me for The Daily Caller, it’s “an assault on the First Amendment.” But the bill also highlights absurd hypocrisy for the abortion industry:

Ask a true politician to name his favorite color, and he’ll answer, “Plaid.” Tim Kaine has painted himself as a “personally pro-life” Catholic politician who has done little to fight the abortion-on-demand policy of his political party. However, Kaine has been supportive of the Hyde Amendment, the annual rider attached to federal budgets that prohibits the use of federal money to pay for abortions.

This year, however, Kaine has agreed to run as Hillary Clinton’s running mate, and she has pledged to put an end to the Hyde Amendment. Rumors emerged this past week that Kaine would change his position on the Hyde Amendment to correspond to Hillary’s, but Kaine later denied that. Speaking with Alisyn Camerota on CNN’s New Day yesterday, Kaine insisted that he supports the Hyde Amendment … but pointedly does not state any opposition to Hillary’s explicit promise to kill it.

It’s looking mighty plaid across the aisle, and not just on abortion. Watch Kaine tapdance around his previous support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty:

“I have been for the Hyde Amendment. And I have not changed my position on that,” Kaine said Friday on CNN’s “New Day.”

Kaine’s anti-abortion stance has been a sticking point for many liberal Democrats concerned that he might work against Clinton on the issue. But Karen Finney, a senior Clinton campaign spokeswoman who is also working with Kaine, said he would keep his personal views but also support a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funds for abortion.

“As Tim Kaine has said, while he supports the Hyde Amendment, he has also made it clear that he is fully committed to Hillary Clinton’s policy agenda, which he understands includes repeal of Hyde,” said Finney, who has previously worked as Clinton’s senior spokeswoman.

Take Kaine’s statement of principles on Hyde with a gigantic grain of salt. As CNN points out, this supposedly pro-life Democratic politician has a solid 100% rating from Planned Parenthood’s political action group, and another 100% from abortion-activist group NARAL in 2015. The reason that his votes on the Hyde Amendment don’t count is because those are cast on overall budgets, not specific issues. Otherwise, he’s as pro-life as Barbara Boxer. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, manages to get a 0% from NARAL, so it’s not as though it’s impossible for a Senator to be both pro-life and a Democrat. Kaine just doesn’t feel like bothering.

There’s another level of hypocrisy on this, too. When Bart Stupak wanted to add language to ObamaCare that would put the Hyde amendment ban into statutory language, Democrats insisted it was unnecessary — because of the annual Hyde Amendment. Stupak ended up caving for an executive order from Barack Obama that backed up the Hyde language, and now just six years later Democrats are demanding an end to both. They are outing themselves as unprincipled liars, and Kaine’s dance here looks very, very familiar to those who recall the first cotillion.

Finally, let’s assume Kaine means what he says here. By becoming Hillary’s running mate, he’s actually surrendering his ability to protect the Hyde Amendment language. As a Senator, he can vote to keep it. As Vice President, he’d only have the ability to do so if the Senate deadlocked 50-50 on a budget — and then he’d be Hillary’s lackey to the upper chamber, not a free agent. Want to guess which way his vote would go?

This is what happens when a supposedly pro-life Catholic joins a progressive, pro-abortion Democratic ticket. They eventually hit Ludicrous Speed and go plaid:

You can’t have a story about abortion laws without a certain amount of angst and controversy, but this week’s news out of Alaska was disturbing for reasons which go well beyond the ubiquitous battles between pro-life and pro-abortion forces. The state had previously passed a referendum driven law which required parental notification (not permission) 48 hours in advance for girls below the age of majority to have an abortion. In Alaska that age is 18. The law was immediately challenged, as most such measures are these days, and the state’s supreme court shot it down, but for the most curious of reasons. (Alaska Dispatch News)

The Alaska Supreme Court has invalidated the state law requiring physicians to give two days notice to parents before performing abortions on girls under 18 years of age.

The parental notification law was approved by 56 percent of voters in a 2010 citizens initiative, with sponsors including Mia Costello, now an Anchorage Republican senator.

The law, Winfree’s decision said, inappropriately discriminates by involving the state in the reproductive decisions only of pregnant minors who seek abortions — not of pregnant minors who plan to carry their babies to term.

This is simply bizarre to say the least. The primary reason for my skepticism on this ruling is that the explanation offered by the court has virtually nothing to do with the limits of Roe v. Wade or any related subject. They found the law lacking because of the lack of equality in its application. As you read through the rationale provided, you’ll find that the legislation’s shortcoming is based on the fact that a law designed to regulate the access of teenage girls seeking abortions fails to provide provisions covering teenage girls not seeking abortions.

That’s a #HeadDesk moment for you to be sure.

If the court had truly wanted to tackle the tough questions surrounding this law they might have taken a few other factors into consideration. Was the burden of notifying the parents of the impending abortion of their daughter’s unborn child too great? Consider for a moment that it is illegal for a child under the age of 18 to get a tattoo in Alaska even if the parent consents to it. Violation of this law can land the tattoo artist in jail. For students under the age of 18 in that state, schools not only require written parental consent for the supervision of administration of over the counter medications (including aspirin) but in some cases require a written consent form from a health care provider. These procedures are apparently considered beyond the maturity of children to handle on their own, but an invasive surgical procedure which terminates a pregnancy is well within their ability to handle?

Keep in mind that I’m not even one of the hard core pro-life conservatives. I’m frequently criticized by some of my more staunch pro-life friends for not being an absolutist on the subject. But this decision seems simply absurd even to me. Parents need to be able to monitor and guide their children through life’s more challenging and difficult moments, and getting an abortion surely falls far higher on the scale than getting a new earring or taking some NyQuil for a chest cold. It sounds to me as if political correctness has infected the court up there to a nearly fatal degree.

(The original version of this article incorrectly stated that children could not get body piercings in Alaska even with parental consent. This is true of tattoos, but body piercings are legal if the parent or guardian consents and is present for the procedure. Article corrected to reflect this.)

So he reversed course on abortion literally overnight in order to advance his political prospects and he’s willing to tell Republicans who disagree with him that he doesn’t particularly want their votes.

Let’s face it, he’s the perfect VP for Trump. Trump/Flynn it is!

EXCLUSIVE: LTG Mike Flynn tells me he is "a pro-life Democrat," clarifies abortion comments by phone. "I believe the law should be changed."

Watch what he said about abortion yesterday below and see if you can detect anything “pro-life” in it. His point, garbled though it is, is straightforward: Women are the ones who’ll be responsible for raising a child to whom they give birth (unless they offer it for adoption, of course, but never mind that), therefore women should be the ones to decide whether they’ll give birth in the first place. Even Trump does better than that when articulating a “pro-life” philosophy.

But look — the guy has a point, sort of, about courts deciding this issue. I think many real pro-lifers are worn down and demoralized about the prospect of undoing Roe v. Wade through democratic means. There’s nothing in the polls to suggest supermajority support for a constitutional amendment and decades of conservative justices on the Supreme Court have produced nothing but frustration, most famously in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and most recently in the Texas abortion decision, for which Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy provided the crucial fifth vote. Social conservatives complain regularly, in fact, that for all the lip service paid to their causes by Republican presidential candidates, the pace of change on a life-and-death issue has been glacial. Flynn’s telling you here that it’s silly to make abortion an electoral litmus test when there’s not a lot to be done about it electorally, at least at the presidential level. Evidently lots of Republican voters agree or else we wouldn’t be blessed with presumptive nominee Donald Trump. The tricky part for Flynn is in how social conservative voters would react if the GOP not only continued to do little about abortion but even stopped paying lip service to it as a presidential issue. Would that be taken by evangelicals as a final kiss off? The nominee has to at least pretend that the base’s social concerns should matter in November, right? Putting Flynn on the ticket would be a bold test of that theory.

And it’d also be a lot of fun. Can you imagine this guy and Trump going loose cannon for four months on which deeply held policy priorities should and shouldn’t matter to the dumb electorate? Gold.

Is it fair to call him the frontrunner? Yesterday’s splashy WaPo story about Flynn’s rise through the VP ranks didn’t use that word specifically, but it sure made it sound like he’s the guy Trump is looking at most closely right now.

He’s a Democrat, pro-choice, and apparently a friendly acquaintance of Vladimir Putin. He’ll fit right in.

After weeks of focusing on a group of current and former elected officials in his search for a running mate, Donald Trump is increasingly intrigued by the idea of tapping retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn to project strength and know-how on national security, according to four people familiar with the vetting process…

The turn toward a military figure is being driven by Trump himself rather than by his advisers, the people said, and comes as the real estate mogul is telling his friends that national unrest may demand a “tough and steady” presence alongside him on the ticket.

In Flynn, they added, Trump thinks he would have a partner whom he trusts, based on their close working relationship over the course of the campaign on policy. And he likes the image of a businessman and a general coming to Washington as outsiders.

“Trump-Flynn. I’ve heard him say that, kind of test out the sound of it,” one source told WaPo. George Wallace and Ross Perot, two other populist “outsider” candidates, also chose servicemen as their VPs (Curtis LeMay and James Stockdale, respectively). WaPo noted of Flynn, though, that “his views on domestic policy are mostly unknown.” After this morning’s interview with ABC, they’re … pretty well known now:

Issues like abortion and same-sex marriage are not at the top of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s list of priorities, the former intelligence official and registered Democrat who is reportedly being vetted as Donald Trump’s running mate said Sunday.

“What people do in their private lives, these are not big issues that our country is dealing with that will cause our country to collapse,” Flynn told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on “This Week.” “I’m more concerned that our country could collapse because we are not dealing with education issues, immigration issues.”…

On abortion, he said, “I think it’s a — I think for women — and these are difficult issues but I think women have to be able to choose what they — you know, sort of the right of choice but I think that that’s a difficult legal decision that — and I think that women are so important in that decision-making process.”

Political media is wringing its hands on Twitter this afternoon that Flynn’s positions on social issues will sink him as a potential VP but I don’t see why. With respect to gay marriage, not only has Trump stayed far away from the subject (he initially disagreed with social conservatives about North Carolina’s law on transgender bathroom use, a proxy issue for LGBT views generally), the party itself may tweak the language in its platform this year to make it less critical of same-sex unions. On abortion, Trump has alternated from hardline pro-life to effectively pro-choice in the span of four days, telling reporters earlier this year that (a) women who abort once Roe is repealed and the practice is banned should face criminal punishment and (b) the abortion laws we have right now should be left alone. Years ago he famously called himself “very pro-choice”; since his emergence as a Republican political figure, he’s described himself as pro-life but still has flattering things to say about Planned Parenthood. He devotes about the same amount of energy trying to convince people that he’s staunchly anti-abortion as he does trying to convince them that he’s devoutly Christian. Which is to say, not much.

So go figure that he’d be considering Flynn. Evangelicals (at least the ones who don’t go to church regularly) supported him overwhelmingly in the primaries against social conservative Ted Cruz despite Trump barely making a pretense of sharing their religious values. If there’s any glaring lesson from the nomination battle this year, it’s that the GOP base will not use social issues as a litmus test provided you can convince them that you share their cultural values in other ways, like with ostentatiously politically incorrect views about mass deportation of illegals and banning Muslims from entering the country. Flynn’s a good match with Trump in that respect: He may be wildly out of sync with the GOP party line on abortion and gay marriage but he claims he was dismissed as head of DIA under Obama for being too politically incorrect about terrorism. If you’re looking to ingratiate yourself to Trump’s base, there’s no more sterling credential than being on Barack Obama’s bad side because you’re too much of an uncompromising hard-ass on confronting jihadis. And as you’ll see, Flynn gave the right answer in this morning’s interview on the other key litmus test, immigration, when asked. How do you feel about “undocumented” immigrants, Martha Raddatz asks. “Undocumented or illegal?” Flynn replies. “OK, so if it’s illegal, it’s illegal. If they’re here illegally then it’s illegal.” He doesn’t specifically say “they all need to go” but he’s got the logical foundation for Trump’s position.

Lest anyone doubt that his social views won’t be a problem for Trump’s core fans, let me remind you of this comment from Trumpkin Numero Uno last year:

So there you go. As a Twitter pal said last night, if Trump ends up picking Flynn, we’ll have four Democrats on the top of the ballot this year — assuming, that is, that delegates allow it. Read this BuzzFeed piece about the fallback plan for anti-Trumpers in Cleveland if, as expected, they fail to dump Trump as nominee. The rules that bind delegates to vote for a presidential candidate according to the results of their state’s primary obviously don’t apply to VP candidates. Typically the delegates rubber-stamp whichever VP the presidential nominee chooses, but maybe not this year. They have it in their power, with a few tweaks to current rules, to defeat Trump’s pick and install their own pick as VP. “It’s a counterweight to Trump,” a source told BuzzFeed. “It’s the grassroots saying if you’re going to do this, you’re going to do it with our pick.” Trump may like the sound of “Trump/Flynn” but he may be stuck with the reality of “Trump/Cruz.” Just one question: Who the hell would want to be drafted to be Trump’s number two, especially if they’ve already endured the public humiliation of not being his handpicked choice? Why would Ted Cruz, eyeing a 2020 run, agree to serve on a ticket that seems highly likely to be defeated, maybe in a landslide, and which will taint him by association with whatever weirdness Trump injects into the campaign the rest of the way?

Two clips for you here, one of Flynn’s interview this morning (the abortion/SSM bit comes at 5:00) and one of Trump superfans Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich in 2008 discussing the worrisome possibility that John McCain might put — gasp — a pro-choice Democrat on the ticket in Joe Lieberman. Can’t wait for their reaction (especially Newt’s!) if Flynn is indeed the pick.

Now, the argument about how much culpability groups and their message have for the actions of individuals is one we seem to come back to after every mass shooting. So there is a long and well-worn history of activists on every side saying ‘Don’t blame us, we are against violence!’ So you’d think, on this morning, Sally Kohn would have some self-reflection about her own history of blame-casting which, as Twitter user ‘neontaster’ pointed out, is well-documented:

Her attacks on pro-lifers after a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic seem like a particularly apt comparison since, as pro-lifers like myself see it, their movement is also about opposing systemic violence. But Sally isn’t buying that:

Note that the only part of “selling baby parts” that is even in question is the word selling. That the organs were transferred and money exchanged is agreed to by everyone. The only question is whether a profit was made. But even if you think it was not, there is still plenty in the story to find objectionable. Even the head of Planned Parenthood apologized for the heartless tone. Sally’s next tweet doubled down on her double-standard:

Well, it’s not really that simple is it? First of all, saying someone else is a killer doesn’t necessarily incite violence and might just be accurate. But if it does incite violence then there are certainly plenty of examples of people involved with Black Lives Matter calling police killers or even murderers.

In fact, Sandra Bland committed suicide. There is no evidence she was killed by police but there is evidence she was depressed and had previously attempted suicide. There are of course lots of other examples we could cite of BLM leaders and people sympathetic with the movement calling police killers and even some of people calling for violence against police.

But back to Sally Kohn and her lack of self-awareness. Just a few moments after criticizing the language of pro-lifers, Kohn retweeted this:

The murderers in Dallas just took the attention off the murderers in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights. Mission accomplished, motherfuckers.

The latter “murderers” in this case are police officers. So spparently Kohn sees “baby killers” as a problem but “murderers” is not a problem. Again, maybe these aren’t incitements at all but accurate descriptions, but Kohn wants to have it both ways, i.e. it’s incitement when pro-lifers say it but just descriptive when BLM says much the same. At some point her tweets became borderline incoherent:

How's about instead of blaming protest movements for violence against police, we blame policing for violence that necessitated protests?!?

Do we really need to be told the protests were a response to what looks like bad policing? Didn’t everyone know that? It seems Kohn is once again trying to rule out the blaming of the protests for inciting the violence but, again, that’s not a stance she takes consistently. She is eager to blame violence on a protest movement when that violence is against a Planned Parenthood clinic. She is unwilling to acknowledge that she is guilty of the same behavior she deplores in others.